26 April 2014

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Synopsis
from Goodreads: For
seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish,
lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most beloved series.
Though millions of “Little House on the Prairie” viewers hated
Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her
character—and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her.

In
Confessions
of a Prairie Bitch,
Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents:
Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite
for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma
MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She
recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind
the scenes of Little
House:
Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing
underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who
played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became
best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and
the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who
played Nellie's mom)appeared
in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to
attack them.

Arngrim
relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely
recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of
traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret"
her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss
of her "Little
House husband"
and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second
career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie
Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is
eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the
prairie to show her the way

Stats
for my copy:
Hardback, published by It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers, 2012; borrowed from my local library.

First
line:
The Los Angeles County Fair is probably not the first place you'd go
if you were seeking to be forgiven of your sins, but I have a
tendency to find strange things in strange places.

My
thoughts: That
opening line is from the Introduction, and is followed by a story
relating how a woman came into the tent at the fair where Alison and
other TV celebrities were signing autographs, caught sight of Alison,
and instantly became enraged, but finally composed herself, gritted
out “I forgive you” and stormed back out of the tent. Alison's
amusing account of this incident set the tone for the book.

I
have fond memories of Little House on the Prairie, but I had no idea that Nellie
Oleson had such a cult following of Little House fans who hated her.
And that fans like the woman in the story above existed at all. I
seriously cannot understand how a person can harbor such hatred for
an actor or an actress just because of the character they play. That
fans cannot separate the real person from the pretend person, it
boggles me. And it boggled Alison Arngrim the first time she
experienced it. But she learned to deal with it, embrace it, and come
to love it.

I
also had not known that Alison had a career as a stand-up comedienne,
but her wonderful sense of humor is evident throughout her book. The
writing is breezy and confiding, as if you were sitting down to lunch
or coffee with the author while she talks to you about her life.
Unlike Melissa Gilbert's memoir, PRAIRIE TALE (which I thoroughly
loved), Alison's memoir spends much more time focused on the Little
House days. The first chapters chronicle her life up until she was
cast as Nellie, then we get nine chapters during her time on the
show, with lots of fascinating anecdotes and facts and behind the
scenes pulling away of the curtain. Even after leaving Little House,
however, the show and Nellie remained a large part of Alison's life.

The
book takes a couple of somber turns, when Alison relates the abuse
she suffered at her older brother's hands, and when Steve Tracy, who
played her husband, Percival, on the show, revealed he had AIDS,
which led to Alison becoming very involved in AIDS activism (and
eventually meeting her husband). But overall it's a fun and
uplifting read that left me with a new found awareness and respect
for Alison Arngrim.

I
was curious when I started the book to see what the author would have
to say about Melissa Sue Anderson. And while she didn't say a lot
about her, what she did say lived up to what I’ve read and heard
over the years about the other Melissa. (And don't get me wrong –
this is not a name dropping tell all spread dirt kind of book, at
all.) I'm now debating whether I want to read Anderson's memoir, THE
WAY I SEE IT, which has gotten a lot of blah reviews on Amazon and
Goodreads. But after reading Gilbert's book and now Arngrim's, I feel
like it would only be fair to get Anderson's side of the story.

Definitely
a must read for diehard fans of “Little House on the Prairie”,
but even if Little House wasn't your favorite show, Alison Arngrim's
story is still interesting and fun and worth spending a few hours
with.

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